I Know We Been Knew That Fandom In General Is Terrible At Tolerating Gray Areas, But I Find Myself Beyond

rewatching the pitt and i neeeeed more details about collins and her relationship with robby. noah said that they broke up around the time adamson died which was 4 years prior. collins is r4 so that would mean they started dating before she started her residency (which i assumed was the case cause if it was a attending/resident romance perlah and princess would know about it). based on actor's age alone she's older than langdon so safe to assume she didn't have a typical pre-med undergrad straight to med school route. so what was her route? what was her career before med school/residency? how did they meet? and did she apply to the residency programme at robby's hospital because of their relationship? only for it to end soon after she started working there? i need details!

kingdon isn't popular just because Mel is a popular character, Langdon is conventionally attractive, the two of them get a lot of scenes together, and the actors have chemistry

their relationship is thematically relevant to the show

the pitt is about burnout in the high stress environment of an ER post-COVID and making connections, both to do the work well and to survive it

between doctors and nurses and between them and the patients and the patients to the social worker as needed

and there are connections between other pairs of people, super young Javadi is paired with mature student McKay for a while which does open Javadi's eyes to life she's been sheltered from, Javadi gets a crush on Mateo who invites her to the park at the end of the day, Dana is the first to figure out Collins' pregnancy on her own and also speaks with Javadi on her new crush, Robby and Collins come together for a deep conversation after her miscarriage and before he sends her home, Mohan helps the sickle cell patient and the mercury poisoned influencer, Santos overtly tries to make connections to the two med students and is ultimately successful with Whitaker but she also gets protective over the daughter whose mother poisoned her father with progesterone and gets another patient to open up about their suicide attempt while Javadi over identifies with the baseball kid, lots of little new connections or longer formed ones

and then there's Mel on the verge of caretaker burnout as the only one supporting her sister

and Langdon who is basically on a different planet from his wife and gets outright rejected by Robby when he asks if they're friends

both so desperate for connection, someone on their level

and they click, they're the only ones that show up excited to be there (Mel more so than Langdon but he's not nearly as dismayed as Collins by the board when they first come in), Langdon offers Mel opportunities like the crike and Terrence, and compliments her successes and checks in with her and tells her to take breaks as needed while Mel seeks him out for his opinion and keeps up with him

they are the connection in the show, they just met and they make each other better at the job, if only all the doctors and nurses could get along this well, right?

except Langdon is an addict, through Robby the show implies the job broke something in him before the cameras even showed up and what Robby sees as a betrayal from Langdon contributes in turn to Robby's collapse on his worst day, and the parallels and what ifs come out

what if Robby had been as attentive to Langdon as Langdon was to Mel? What if Robby had allowed the connection instead of rejecting Langdon? What if Mel had shown up earlier? Would she have just burned herself out faster?

Langdon and Mel are the high point so Robby and Langdon yelling at each other and trying to tear each other down and talking more at each other than to each other can be the low point

Langdon and Mel improving their relationship in future seasons, moving beyond a day one spark to having more time and experience to deepen their relationship and making each other better doctors in the process is proving the themes of the show, that you need support and connection to do the job well and survive it

so of course people want to extend that into their personal lives so Mel is not alone with her sister and Langdon isn't in a crumbling marriage so they can have connection and support and be better people in their personal lives and not just professionally

Langdon and Mel are also shown as foils to Robby and Collins who once dated and Mel's single with a sister pushing her to make a romantic connection when the connection she's made is with Langdon and Langdon seems well on the way to divorce even before the addiction reveal

and the actors have a lot of chemistry

Reblogging for #2

some more for the collection while i finish writing the fic!

All of this. I am so obsessed with imagining their relationship before the series starts.

Also, River is all about River in a lot of ways. And he's sad about Spider's death because it's not only the final death of what their *relationship* once was, it's also a symbol of him losing who *he* once was. Or who he thought he was going to be.

I think that the insane yearning and obsession they have for each other is driven a lot by how needy they both are for a certain kind of success and recognition. They recognize each other as fellow travellers. They also have those feelings you have when you have a crush on someone and it's kind of about how you think that person has something amazing about them that makes you want to bask in their aura but also you kind of resent them because you're envious of their sparkle.

The seething disdain they feel for each other after the Falling Out is a reflection of their disappointment in how the other has failed to live up to the (still nascent) image they projected and the grimy mirror that holds up to their own respective reflections.

Instead of Britain's most dangerous field asset, River is a fuck up who can't follow basic instructions (for his surveillance assignment - hence Stanstead/King's Cross). Instead of an astute political operative climbing the ranks and pulling strings behind the scenes, James is babysitting a bunch of filing cabinets and only gets trotted out when some woman with actual power needs a biddable warm body for her own purposes. They both suck and they hate looking at the other man and being reminded of the abjectness of failure, of falling short, of being so desperately close but so far. It's embarrassing watching the other one hanging from the cliff by his fingernails while he puts on a show like he's still climbing the mountain.

I think the saddest thing about their relationship is that these boys never even really knew each other. And they couldn't because they didn't even know themselves. They were too young and trying too desperately to outrun themselves and become perfect, unassailable, lovable.

They're both so deeply lonely. And then Spider dies and River is even more alone. They ended up hating each other but James also understood what it was like to live with that black hole in the centre of himself and there was a type of company in that, even after the love was gone.

river and spider are just such a tragedy to me. the way they both (in the books) are just. constantly wistfully thinking about Back When They Were Friends… and it’s about more than just their friendship in a lot of ways, it’s that Back Then was when they still had bright unbounded futures, back when they thought they’d wander straight into influential spots at the service and be bestest friends forever while they changed the world and got everything they ever wanted.

and like. the thing is, that is already gone. they’re never getting that back. even if they somehow put all their bitterness and history aside and became close again, it wouldn’t be the same as before… they’ll never get that youthful optimism that (in my head at least) defined their pre-series relationship back. that version of their friendship is gone forever already.

but then spider dies and, well. now it’s really really gone. now even the hope of a “different from before but close enough to what they had once” reunion is gone.

just. agh. this idea of like. that, that version of their relationship, the version that they miss, is already dead and buried before the series starts and there’s no getting it back. there’s already no getting it back. but they still keep hoping (or at least, river keeps hoping, though i think spider does too) that it somehow, against all rules of logic, WILL come back anyway. until spider dies and river has to face that that hope, while impossible before anyway, it now for real actually impossible impossible…

heartbreaking, man. they’re such a tragedy.

Apple

Summary: Teenage River visits his mother in France.

Adult language

No warnings

Gen

746 words

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When River arrives, the house is dark and empty. He floats through it like a ghost, present without leaving an imprint anywhere. Two days later, the door opens. He recognizes his mother's tinkling laughter. He's not sure if the brittle note was always there or if he just didn't notice it as a boy.

The burble of a conversational duet flows closer and then they stumble into the kitchen, where he’s sitting at the table. After a minute the man starts sliding his hand up under his mother's skirt and he realizes that if he doesn't announce his presence, they're never going to realize he's there. Zero situational awareness. He coughs and they jump apart.

“Oh! River! What are you doing here? You scared me half to death skulking there.”

He gets straight to the point. “Where were you?”

“At a party down the coast. Marvelous people. Marvelous wine. Some of the Cannes crowd, you know.” River really did not know. She paused a moment, taking in his presence. “What are you doing here?” River felt the genuine confusion of her question like a blow, hot poisonous shame immediately flooding his body. Again. Not fucking again. How does he keep falling for this trap? Stupid stupid stupid.

“I'm visiting you. We had agreed…” he heard the choked sound in his voice and hated himself for it. He cleared his throat. “You agreed that I would come visit at the term break....”

“Oh! Is that this week!?”

“Yes. Obviously.”

“Oh." Her face fell. "It's just, we hadn't exactly planned on you, darling. Gavin's friends...they have the yacht in port at Monaco... Well, it's not exactly an event for children…”

“I'm not a child.”

“I just wouldn't want you to be bored. You understand, don't you?”

“Oh River, don't be like that. Maybe you could come back next week?”

His shoulders tensed as he pulled into himself. “You don't want me hanging around ruining your image, you mean.”

“I have school next week.”

“You could miss a few days to see your own mother, surely?”

“I have O Levels prep”, he muttered.

“And that's a higher priority than me?” She managed to sound extravagantly wounded.

“You make everything a higher priority than me! Do you even remember I exist when I'm not around?”

Boyfriend #178 stepped toward River, a hand extended, and placed his arm between them like a boxing referee. 

"Now son" he started but River turned on him before he could get his platitude out.

“When I need your input I'll ask her for your credit card number.”

“Have some respect for your elders”, his mother hissed. River turned his scowl back on her.

“You're a fucking bitch.”

“Now look here you little shit, I know I'm not your father but I'll be damned if I let you speak to her that way.”

“Jokes on you, mate. I don't even have a father.”

“You do,” Isobel interjected hotly.

“Could have fooled me”, he shrugged.

“You're just like him”, she muttered, lip curling almost imperceptibly. But River saw it. It was hard to shake old habits and his included frequently scanning his mother's face for signs of gathering weather.

“Whatever. Bye.” He scraped the chair back roughly and went to collect his things, flipping a two finger salute over his shoulder as he left the room. When he got upstairs, he packed slower than he needed to, to give her a chance to come find him. Apologize. Yell at him. Anything. An hour later, he left without a word. No one tried to stop him.

Three days later, he opened the kitchen door in Tunbridge Wells.

“You're back early, River!”

His grandmother was in the kitchen,  busy at the counter. He could smell food. His stomach rumbled audibly. The pocket money he'd left with hadn't been meant to cover two and a half unscheduled days in Paris on the way back and he hadn't exactly been on three squares.

“Yeah. Mum got busy, so.” Rose put an arm around him. 

“She does get busy, sometimes”, she said in a knowing tone. 

“Yeah.” It came out as a sigh.

“Your grandfather's out in the garden. I'm sure he could use some help.”

“Okay. Thanks Nan,” he mumbled around the piece of bread she'd handed him. He opened the door again, wondering if his cover story about what happened in France would make it past the OB's radar. He was finding lately that he was better at lying than he would have given himself credit for.

Jack Lowden as River Cartwright Slow Horses – S04E03 – Penny for Your Thoughts

Im gonna lose it over the way people are so prescriptive about shipping

"Why are you focusing on romance when the show doesn't --" because I want to, i dont need the show to do anything, im not trying to get into the writers room im on ao3, you don't have to panic because i'm engaging with media different than you

"You cant ship them together because [something in canon]" what on gods green earth would be the point of fanfic if all it did was respect canon?

"That's never going to be canon" okay! I dont need it to be! Once again, hence the fanfic! 99.9% of things ive shipped in my life were not canon and had no chance of becoming canon and tbh that makes it more fun for me

"Stop shipping [pairing] theyre obviously platonic" or "why are people shipping A and B when A and C is right there?" This isn't a competition, i'm not trying to prove anything to you, im shipping the characters who make my heart pang and if you dont share that perspective we're all going to be okay

📷 Jack Lowden by Matt Easton

Thoughts inspired by @saulbetter's recent posts.

This show is kind of sold or discussed as "spies! but they suck at being spies!" But the thing that all the slow horses actually have in common isn't that they're bad spies, it's that they're people without social capital. They actually range from competent to excellent at the technical aspects of their work (Ho, Catherine, Marcus, Shirley, Coe, and even River are all good at the hard skills of their jobs. We are told Louisa screwed up but in both show and books she is shown to be one of the most reliable performers on the team). But they don't have friends or patrons to protect them when things go sideways.

The reason they're the rejects is because they're loners who struggle to connect with other people for all their various reasons (childhood trauma, job-related PTSD, addiction, personality disorder, inherent temperament). So they're playing checkers when their internal opponents at Regent's Park are playing chess. To the extent that they even realize that the social/political game exists (Ho and Catherine mostly don’t), they're bad at it (Coe, Lech) and/or think they shouldn't have to play it (Marcus, Shirley). River impressively manages to be deficient in all three aspects: totally naive to the politics of advancement within the Park, bad with people, and so committed to his own view of himself as a Boy Scout that he thinks he shouldn't have to sully his hands with any of it.

This is why the show is such a brilliant office drama. This one is for all the folks who are good on paper but bomb in interviews, for all the people who are promoted based on their technical mastery and then shit the bed as managers because they're illiterate at reading people. This is why it's such a stroke of genius that River's ascendant career is cut off at the knees by tailing Taverner. He's so full of himself and such a try hard that he mistakenly thinks doing an unrequested extra credit assignment about his boss makes him clever instead of creepy, annoying, and red flagged as a potential troublemaker.

Unfortunately, because Mick Herron is unable to let the story or the characters grow, this excellent premise results in some deep weirdness later in the book series. (Weirder than the deadbeat dad child soldier sex cult plotline, you say? Idk, you be the judge.)

Book spoilers under the cut.

First, let’s talk about Lech Wicinski. (I know, no one wants to talk about Lech Wicinski, but he is the curly-haired insomniac introvert of my heart so I’m going to talk about him.) I love Lech but parts of his origin story are so stupid. He’s just a normal guy who is comfortable in his niche and relatively unambitious and gets screwed by ambitious people’s big ego shenanigans, which he falls into by accident when he unthinkingly steps outside his work comfort zone for a minute. So far, so good. But then, while he’s desperately trying to save his job and reputation, he’s also… not? Like, why would this sort of overly serious but otherwise very normal young-ish middle class man immediately and inexplicably decide not to seek medical treatment for a profoundly disfiguring injury? Why does he never even actually try to show to his fiancee that the revelation that causes the breakdown of their relationship was completely fictitious? It makes no sense! Except, the author is lazily destroying Lech’s social capital to make it make sense that he’s now a slow horse for life. 

Similarly, River can’t have Sid in S1 because she is a bright and well-rounded person while he is cute but also an idiot nepo baby manchild. So do the books resolve this imbalance by allowing River to grow - or even just change - in response to various challenges like dashed career aspirations, finally meeting his psychopath biodad, the steep mental decline of his beloved father figure, etc? No. Instead of letting River at least attempt to grow up, the books put River and Sid on a level by cutting Sid down instead - putting her in protection (ie. cutting all her social ties) and giving her a traumatic brain injury that hollows out her previously bright personality. Heaven knows we’re all miserable now. Sure do hope they fix that plotline for the show! I love them as endgame and I honestly think the show could do something so satisfying and poignant with them finally finding their missed connection but the books make the way they finally get together so creepy and sad.

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Slow Horses (TV), Slough House - Mick Herron Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Sidonie "Sid" Baker/River Cartwright Characters: River Cartwright, Sidonie "Sid" Baker Additional Tags: Fake/Pretend Relationship, OCs (secondary characters), Co-workers to lovers, One Night Stands Summary:

Sid asks River to be her date to fool her friends into thinking she's moved on from a bad break up. In a surprise to no one who's ever read a romance novel, the only one she's fooling is herself.

(I think maybe you could consider this fluff if you're willing to overlook the teensy tiny ethical violation of banging someone you have under surveillance.)